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Tag: emotions

I have thrown pity parties over the years. They were poorly attended. The conversations were dismal. The gloom was palpable. They dragged on into the night. And I inevitably woke up with a hangover called depression. Not getting bogged down in self-pity is a golden rule of mental health. Accept the fact that life isn’t […]

You want to be wise about your emotions. There are some things we often do with and about them that we must learn NOT to do. Growth and maturity happens in several ways. One way is that we learn to do good things we are not doing. Another way is that we stop doing harmful […]

This question seems simple and innocent. Instead, it opens the door to a snarky and tangled complexity. It is not easily answered. Biology, psychology, and spirituality provide different insights. Here is how I see it. When you feel angry (i.e., have the emotion of anger) you are not only having an emotional experience, you are […]

Clueless is Never a Compliment! Being clueless about your emotions is never a good thing! Self-awareness about your emotions is the first step toward healthy emotions. This is one more reason why I love the psalms. The psalmists were profoundly self-aware about their emotions. They felt deeply about their experiences. They knew what they felt. […]

On Sunday, the sermon theme was Psalms: Life as Worship. The focus was on the psalms being full of emotional experience that is lifted to God through various forms of prayer. The psalmist uses his emotional energies as the launching pad to seek after God. I only had a few minutes to talk about the power […]

A few years ago I had a conversation with a man who was struggling with a bad attitude toward a co-worker. Even the sight of that co-worker was enough to upset him. I gave him a simple assignment. Every day he was to do something nice for that co-worker: help out, provide encouragement, be pleasant, […]

Emotions! They are what’s contagious. Good ones and bad ones. Happiness, excitement, hope, calm, patience … and anger, sadness, frustration, irritation… You’ve heard the phrase, “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t no one happy.” I have looked for the origins of this phrase. A 10-minute web search asking the question did not yield much insight. Well, […]